


Believer

by BeccaAnne814



Series: Bucky Barnes x Reader Oneshots [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, PG-13 sexual situations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-12-01 01:03:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11475339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeccaAnne814/pseuds/BeccaAnne814
Summary: You don't believe that you deserve forgiveness, but Bucky thinks otherwise. This Oneshot is based off of Imagine Dragons'Believer.





	Believer

The screams had him bolting upright in bed.  At first he thought they were his own, but he wasn't sweating and he couldn't recall having a nightmare.  When he heard them again, he realized that they were coming from the next room.  YN's room.  He moved to the edge of the bed, ready to go to her, to see if she needed anything when he heard the faucet in her bathroom come on.  He sat on the side of the bed for a few more minutes, debating with himself if he should check on her.  He heard the door to her room open and close so he decided to try to go back to sleep.

He lay in bed for a while, tossing and turning, worry seeping into his brain.  He remembered what it was like for him once he'd broken free of Hydra's control, how the nightmares had plagued him almost nightly for the two years he was on the run.  Since T'Challa's men had successfully removed the trigger words, the nightmares had lessened, but he still had one on occasion.  

YN was still new to the idea of freedom.  T'Challa had shown up a few weeks ago with a bedraggled-looking person following close behind him.  T'Challa had told him and Steve that he'd found her in Prague and that she was an Inhuman who'd been controlled by HIVE.  He thought that she and Bucky would have something in common and could possibly help one another.

Bucky had tried to befriend her, but she was still too raw from the mind-control, too untrusting to allow anyone in.  He hadn't given up, but he had taken a step back.

Now he was laying in bed, wondering if he should seek her out, try to talk to her again.  Feeling frustrated and useless, he threw the sheets off of himself and pulled on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt.  He strained his ears once he was in the hallway, listening for any clues that might tell him where she was.  The rhythmic pounding and grunts of exertion led him to the training room where he found her pummeling a punching bag.

She turned when she heard him enter, glaring at him for interrupting her.

"I heard your screams," he told her.  "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," she said as she went back to hitting the bag hanging from the steel support mounted to the wall.

He walked over to her and picked up a roll of tape.  He began to tape up his flesh hand and he saw her watching him in the mirror.

When he was finished, he motioned for her to come at him.  "Punching bags never did me any good.  I much prefer to actually hit someone, especially if they deserved it."

She raised her eyebrow in question.  "You think you deserve to be hit by me?"

He held out his hands in surrender.  "The Winter Soldier, the Fist of Hydra, need I go on?"

She didn't respond verbally, choosing instead to let the swift right cross answer for her.  Bucky knew that she was strong, it was part of her Inhuman powers.  He'd watched her train, so he knew that she was a match for his own strength.  The other half of her powers he'd yet to see.  He knew they called her Shock Wave due to the sonic blast she could produce by slamming her hands together.  There was a part of him that wanted to witness it, but he had also see footage of the destructive power behind that blast.  Whole city blocks had been decimated in a matter of seconds.

 

They continued like this for a few weeks.  She would have a nightmare, or he would, and they would end up in the training room in the middle of the night, fighting and sweating out the horrors that plagued them both.

Tonight was no different than the rest.  She had been the one to wake up screaming and he'd been waiting for her in the gym, ready to offer the only assistance she would take from him.  

He went in for a gut punch, but she twisted and dropped into a crouch, her leg sweeping out to knock him off of his feet.  He quickly reached out to grab her leg as she was rising back up and she lost her balance.  She fell forward, catching herself just before she landed right on top of him.  She stared down at him for a long moment before straddling his hips and crashing her lips down on his.

Bucky was completely unprepared for this turn of events, but he was quick to catch up.  His hands grasped her hips as she began to grind against him.  Unsure of how far she wanted to take this, he allowed her to have control.  It had been years since he'd been with a woman, and even if he'd wanted to stop her, his primal urges took over as she used him to drown out the pain and torment of her nightmares.

After that night, they no longer went to the gym.  It didn't matter who'd had the nightmare; she would always come to him.  If it was her nightmare that woke them, she was hard and rough with him, but if it was his nightmare, she allowed him to be slow and tender.  They had become the balm for one another's pain, but that was all.

Bucky had thought this change in their relationship would spill over into their daily interactions, but he was wrong.  She was still as closed off and taciturn as before.  He'd tried to talk to her, only to have her brush him off and stalk out of the room.  The only time she allowed her guard to come down was when they were shrouded in the darkness of night.

Bucky watched her start to open up to Wilson and he saw red.  Of all the people she would choose to be herself around, it just had to be him.  He and Wilson were constantly at one another's throats.  It wasn't that he disliked the other man, he just didn't see the appeal like Steve did.  He could acknowledge that Wilson had been there for Steve when he'd needed a friend, but having YN put her trust in him sent a spear of jealousy right through his heart.

_First things first_

_I'ma say all the words inside my head_

_I'm fired up and tired of the way that things have been, oh-ooh_

_The way that things have been, oh-oo_

 

When he awoke to the sound of her screams that night, he sat on the side of the bed and made up his mind.  He was tired of being treated like a piece of meat, a toy for her to play with when she deemed fit.  He was pulling on a pair of sweats when she walked into the room.  She gave him a confused look that quickly turned to surprise when she saw the anger in her eyes.

"I'm not doing this with you anymore," he told her.

"What are you talking about?" she demanded.  "Our little arrangement has been working out fine for the both of us.  Why change things now?"

"You think you can just come in here and use me whenever you please," he told her through gritted teeth.  Now that he was finally saying what had been on his mind for weeks, the anger was staring to boil up inside of him.  "I'm not your plaything, YN.  I have feelings as well."

_Second thing second_

_Don't you tell me what you think that I can be_

_I'm the one at the sail, I'm the master of my sea, oh-ooh_

_The master of my sea, oh-ooh_

She walked over to him, her fingers trailing down his chest as she grew closer to him. "I've been extremely fair with you, Bucky.  I let you take things at your pace when you've have a nightmare."

"That's just it YN," he began, grabbing her hands in his.  "You decide. Well, I'm tired of you constantly calling the shots.  You think I'm always going to be here, I'm always going to be at your beck and call.  That ends now.  If you want my help, then I'll give it to you, but the days of you controlling where and how we deal with our demons is over."

She wrenched her hands free and took a step back when she realized that he was serious.  "What do you want from me, Bucky?"

_I was broken from a young age_

_Taking my sulking to the masses_

_Writing my poems for the few_

_That looked at me, took to me, shook to me, feeling me_

_Singing from heartache from the pain_

_Take up my message from the veins_

_Speaking my lesson from the brain_

_Seeing the beauty through the..._

_Pain!_

_You made me a, you made me a believer, believer_

_Pain!_

_You break me down, you build me up, believer, believer_

_Pain!_

_Let the bullets fly, oh let them rain_

_My life, my love, my drive, it came from..._

_Pain!_

_You made me a, you made me a believer, believer_

"I want you to talk to me," he all but yelled at her.  "Don't you think I know what you're going through?  Don't you think I understand the emotions that are raging inside of you right now?  I've been where you are.  I've been torn apart, I've had someone else in my mind, pulling my strings and making me do things that I never thought I was capable of.  I know the pain that you're feeling.  I feel it every single day, but I absolutely refuse to allow you to be another source of mine."

A look of shock came over her face at his words.  "I never meant to cause you pain, Bucky.  I thought I was helping you ease it."

_Third things third_

_Send a prayer to the ones up above_

_All the hate that you've heard has turned your spirit to a dove, oh-ooh_

_Your spirit up above, oh-ooh_

"Well, you aren't," he spat at her.  "You're so caught up in your own pain and self-loathing that you can't see how your actions affect those around you.  You keep yourself closed off, and don't think that I don't know why.  You don't think you deserve kindness, that you don't deserve to be happy."

"Do you know how many innocent people are dead because of me?" she asked, her eyes full of rage as she threw her hands up between them.  "I've killed hundreds of innocent men, women, and children with these hands.  I'm responsible for each and every life that I took."

_I was choking in the crowd_

_Building my rain up in the cloud_

_Falling like ashes to the ground_

_Hoping my feelings, they would drown_

_But they never did, ever lived, ebbing and flowing_

_Inhibited, limited_

_'Til it broke open and rained down_

_It rained down, like..._

_Pain!_

_You made me a, you made me a believer, believer_

_Pain!_

_You break me down, you build me up, believer, believer_

_Pain!_

_Let the bullets fly, oh let them rain_

_My life, my love, my drive, it came from..._

_Pain!_

_You made me a, you made me a believer, believer_

"You forget that I'm just like you," he told her.  "I know what it's like to feel as though you don't deserve any kindness, any chance at happiness, but I was wrong and so are you.  What you did wasn't you.  For years I held onto the blame and the guilt, telling myself that I deserved to be punished for all the horrors I'd committed."  He took a deep breath before he continued.  "It wasn't until you showed up that I realized how foolish that was.  I saw you treating yourself the same way I'd been treating myself and I realized that Steve was right.  It wasn't me that killed all of those people.  It may have been my hands, but it wasn't me."

"I see what you're trying to do, but. . ."

"No," he said, interrupting her.  "I'm not going to sit back and watch you torture yourself for years like I did.  Let me in, YN.  Let me help you."

"Why, Bucky?" she asked, as sadness and frustration washed over her face.

_Last things last_

_By the grace of the fire and the flames_

_You're the face of the future, the blood in my veins, oh-ooh_

_The blood in my veins, oh-ooh_

_But they never did, ever lived, ebbing and flowing_

_Inhibited, limited_

_'Til it broke open and rained down_

_It rained down, like..._

_Pain!_

_You made me a, you made me a believer, believer_

_Pain!_

_You break me down, you build me up, believer, believer_

_Pain!_

_Let the bullets fly, oh let them rain_

_My life, my love, my drive, it came from..._

_Pain!_

_You made me a, you made me a believer, believer_

 

He walked over to her, and took her face in his hands.  His fingers tracing over the contours of her cheeks and jawline as she read the answer on his face.  "I love you, YN, and I can't stand to see you in pain.  I didn't mean to fall in love with you, and you're probably wishing that I hadn't, but I could no less control the way I feel about you than I can control the rising and setting of the sun.  You're in my blood now and to get you out would mean cutting the heart from my chest."

"I'm no good for you, Bucky," she argued.

"I disagree," he told her as he lowered his mouth to hers, his lips gently brushing over hers as he continued to speak.  "You've been the best thing to happen to me in a long time."

Her eyes had fluttered closed as his hands ran down her arms, lifting them to wrap around his neck before kissing her again.  When he pulled away, she opened her eyes again, searching for answers in those blue-grey depths.

"Pain may have brought us together, but it doesn't have to define us anymore, YN.  Let me in.  Let me show you how things can be between us when we don't allow the pain and guilt to control us anymore."

His eyes were pleading with her, and her heart began to ache as she thought about what he was offering her.  T'Challa had given her a second chance when he'd brought her here, but Bucky was offering her a whole new life if she was willing to trust him, to believe in him.  

"You made me a believer," she told him as he lifted her and carried her to his bed.  He lay down beside her and pulled her into his arms.  His hand drew small circles on her hip until she fell asleep, her nightmares held at bay as his love enveloped her.


End file.
